← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Hilaire Belloc
Thread ID: 9802 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2003-09-15
2003-09-15 16:53 | User Profile
[url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3110042.stm]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3110042.stm[/url]
Persson fails to persuade In the end, it was not even close.
Despite predictions that sympathy for the murdered foreign minister Anna Lindh - a passionate supporter of the euro - would bring out the Yes vote, Swedes put emotions aside to reject monetary union with Europe in Sunday's referendum.
Sweden's Prime Minister Goran Persson, who last week lost a trusted friend and colleague in Ms Lindh, must now try to establish why he failed to convince his people of the benefits of signing up to the single currency.
"People were not persuaded that it was in their self interest," says Dr Anders Mellbourn, director of the Swedish Institute for International Affairs.
"And people only accept reforms and vote for them when they can see the personal relevance of them."
Bad timing
Persuading a Eurosceptical nation of the advantages of closer integration was never going to be easy, and the task was complicated by deep divisions within Mr Persson's government.
Five of his ministers openly opposed joining, while some remarks made by Mr Persson himself during the campaign suggested he was not convinced of the urgency of the project.
Early on he suggested that another referendum could be held if Swedes rejected the euro in the first round - effectively inviting anyone undecided to vote No, since they could always change their minds later.
He also conceded that there were problems within the eurozone, notably with France and Germany's failure to stick to the rules laid out in the EU's Growth and Stability Pact, which sets the ceiling for budget deficit at 3% of GDP.
In the aftermath of the vote, government ministers were quick to stress that the vote had come at a most unfortunate moment.
"Our greatest difficulty was the timing of the campaign," says Sweden's deputy finance minister Gunnar Lund. "The entire European Union was going through a very difficult phase - a very difficult phase - a recesssion."
Meanwhile, as the eurozone suffered, Sweden's economy continued to perform comparatively well - prompting many Swedes to question whether it was wise to hand over the reins to the European central bank.
"The relatively good situation economically in the country in contrast with most of Europe was a key factor in the outcome of the vote," says Dr Mellbourn.
Mr Persson's difficulties may also have been aggravated by the fact that No-campaigners stole some of his own clothes.
They emphasised Sweden's success in social policy, warning that the famous cradle-to-grave welfare system could be jeopardised by monetary union - a threat which it is thought to have been taken particularly seriously by rural voters.
Mr Persson's Yes camp meanwhile looked not to Sweden's past successes, but toward a future fully integrated into Europe.
"The Social Democrats have ruled with a certain appeal to the nostalgia for the past," says Carl Bildt, former prime minister and leader of the Swedish liberal-conservative Moderate Party.
"In this campaign rather suddenly they said that Sweden needed to be more modern, more European-oriented - and that was a rather too swift a change in message for some people."
No thanks
But Sweden's No vote also highlights a wider trend among European electorates at large - **when the citizens of established EU countries are invited to vote on EU issues they tend to vote no.
Suspicion of Brussels appears to haunt many EU citizens, who are wary of being ruled by a distant body which they see as having limited democratic credentials.**This perception is believed to be particularly acute in Sweden, whose political culture places great emphasis on openness and accountability.
"Sweden's geographical location, language and culture affects our attitude and means that many here do not feel close to Brussels," says Margot Wallstrom, Sweden's EU Commissioner.
"It's important for all EU leaders to work to be closer to their citizens. It's a challenge for all countries."
Mr Persson appeared acutely aware during the campaign that France and Germany's failure to respect the stability pact also threw up issues of transparency and fairness.
He vowed that he would fight to make sure the pact was functioning properly before leading Sweden into the eurozone in around 2006.
That battle has now been indefinitely postponed.
2003-09-15 16:55 | User Profile
Call me over-optimistic but I do believe the first cracks in the EU are appearing. It maybe still some time before this dreadful entity is destroyed, but the first cracks are appearing.
2003-09-15 19:16 | User Profile
I don't think the EU will be dissolved, but perhaps its socialist mission can subverted. I love the idea of the EU forcing free market reforms in France! It would serve them right.
2003-09-15 20:22 | User Profile
*Originally posted by iwannabeanarchy@Sep 15 2003, 13:16 * ** I don't think the EU will be dissolved, but perhaps its socialist mission can subverted. **
I do believe the EU will be dissolved. Mostly because Brussels doesn't yet posses the major central authority to hold it together, which means it will have to do it through military and security forces. Plus there are so many regional divisions between the EU members that it can't possibly last, except by imposing military might on less complient members. But yet as Eastern Europe proved to the USSR, that only works for so long. The more Europe is becoming integrated, the more nationalism is spreading, both old and new. EU maybe coming together economically and politically, but culturally its coming apart(which is the main battleground these days). People are beginning to revive their long lost cultural heritages, including languages(Ireland for example reestablished Gaelic as the offical language). So the EU will crumble, probally not for some time but it eventually will.
2003-09-16 15:08 | User Profile
**I love the idea of the EU forcing free market reforms in France! **
What I notice about EU economic policy is that while it's all for "free trade" inside the collective, it's protectionist as hell vis a vis the rest of the world, but especially the US.
Wasn't Lindh featured in the NYT magazine a few weeks ago?